Everything You Need to Know About Io

Everything You Need to Know About Io

Hello everyone, and welcome to our second dev journal about Jupiter’s Forge. Today we’re going to begin digging into the meat of the upcoming Offworld expansion, starting with the most obvious place, Io itself.

As we talked about last week, Io is not a pleasant place to be. A good look at the moon’s surface should reveal why. Immediately alarming is the fact that Io is covered in lava flows and volcanic pits. However, most of this lava is composed of basalt. This is in fact very good news for your budding company, as newly developed basalt platforms will be able to harvest these flows and pits. These facilities will convert basalt into substantial quantities of iron, silicon, and uranium, then will ship these raw materials back to your headquarters for whatever purpose you may require.

Another use your company may have for these lava flows is likely going to be less direct. The flows have carved out caves all across the surface of the moon. As on Ceres, these caves can be very valuable to own, allowing a new point from which you can access nearby resource deposits. This can let you expand your own infrastructure around the resource to improve output, or even set up shop right next to a competitor and use their resources yourself. Keeping an eye out for these valuable cave systems can help you prioritize claims more effectively, and potentially avoid races for resources that initially appear sparse.

Also as on Ceres, resource deposits are small and difficult to access. Even the largest veins of minerals will dry up quickly, diminishing in value the more they are mined. As production is lost, we will need to either reduce our consumption or find new sources to mine.

Once again, ice will be present in some form. However, the ice of Io is different from what is found on Mars or Ceres. Io’s “ice” is in fact not ice at all - it is a sulfur dioxide frost. Thankfully, we still have a use for this and can pull oxygen from it in much the same way that we collect other frozen resources (at least as far as your company is concerned).

Finally, and most importantly, Io has no water. Nothing on the surface, no ice to melt, and nothing underground that you could dig out. Instead, you’ll have to collect hydrogen from the radioactive atmosphere, and oxygen from the sulfur frost. Combining these is the only way you’ll acquire water - and through it, food - on the harsh surface of Jupiter’s Forge.